Why the restaurant industry?
It’s a great question and one that I ask myself a lot.
In my opinion, the better question is “Why food and what does food mean to me?” For me, food is everything. I have been surrounded by great cooks ever since I’ve been in diapers. Growing up, everything revolved around the kitchen. While I’m having breakfast, I’d be talking about what’s for lunch. While I’m having lunch, I’d be asking about dinner.
Why food? When I was a young kid, my mom used to get me to help her out in the kitchen. I hated it, I just wanted to go back to watching Pokémon like every other 10-year-old back then. How did she convince me? She said that one day I will have to make a girl fall for me, and the secret to that is making her tummy fall in love with you. Trust me, it came in clutch when I was chasing the girl of my dreams. But we will get to that in another post because it deserves one of its own (or many, I could write a book, maybe even a screenplay).
When I was 12, my uncle (who was like a father to me) followed his dream and opened up a restaurant, not really knowing what he was getting into. Trust me, he was a terrible cook. Every once in a while, he would wake up early on a Saturday morning and make breakfast for the family. Barely edible, we would devour it purely because of his enthusiasm. So when the idea of opening a restaurant struck, we were obviously all in with him. Rest assured, he took a back seat with the cooking on this one and partnered with his brilliantly talented family friend who happened to be a chef (phew). After school, I was entrusted with pizza deliveries, handing out menus, and pretty much anything else that a 12-year-old was capable of. I watched his passion turn into a business, but it didn’t seem easy. Especially when it’s a South Indian guy opening up an Italian restaurant (LOL). Skeptics were plenty, but that didn’t stop us. Our love of food trumped anything else.
I learnt a lot watching him grow that business. The restaurant industry is ruthless. Long hours. Pissed-off customers. Extreme temperatures in the kitchen. Everyone knows the stereotypical environment in the back of the kitchen, not something meant for kids to see, but I saw it all. The way I saw it, the cons far outweighed the pros, yet the industry went on. Chefs became chefs very well knowing what they were in for. 16-hour days of abuse, intense heat, knife cuts, no social life, low wages, the list goes on. They all got Burnt at some point.
Over the years my love of food only grew. When I was in university, my friends would show up with groceries at my doorstep demanding that I make food for them in return for free booze, among other things. At this point, I knew that the food industry was where I was meant to be. This came as no surprise; my family had been in the food business for generations. Starting with my great-grandfather, who was the first person to export shrimp from India to the US. It was only natural that I wanted to follow in his footsteps and pave my own way in this crazy, unforgiving industry.
The first 3-4 years of my career taught me the ins and outs of the seafood business. From working on the ground floor of a shrimp factory in a small village in the boondocks of India to handling the procurement division for one of the largest seafood importers in the US. I learned a lot there. It became apparent that the struggle was real for all players in the food space: technology was obsolete. The old-school nature of the business frustrated me quite a bit. Everything was pen and paper and a bunch of Excel sheets. You’re talking about a $200m+ company, working like they are in the 80’s. I went down a rabbit hole of how to make my work life easier. “How could tech make this old-school industry better?” was the burning question. This led me down the path of discovering the cool world of “foodtech”.
An eagerness to break into this world, and a few outreaches later, I ended up landing a job at a foodtech company that was really trying to make a difference to the lives of the people in the industry. I was inspired by the people I met along that journey. That was it for me. It became my obsession to see how we can make the industry that I love so much, better, for the people of the industry.
This is just the start of the journey for me and my wonderful cofounders. I guess I’ve slowly started to realize the answer to my question. Why the restaurant industry?
Because of the people in it. At the end of the day, that’s who we’re building it for.
Welcome to burnt.
